Donald Trump refuses to sign G-7 statement, snubs Justin Trudeau

President Trump upended two days of global economic diplomacy late Saturday, refusing to sign a joint statement with America’s allies, threatening to escalate his trade war on the country’s neighbours and deriding Canada’s prime minister as “very dishonest and weak.” In a remarkable pair of acrimony-laced tweets from aboard Air Force One as he flew away from the Group of 7 summit toward a meeting with North Korea’s leader, Trump lashed out at Justin Trudeau. 

He accused the prime minister, who hosted the seven-nation gathering, of making false statements. Literally moments after Trudeau’s government proudly released the joint statement, noting it had been agreed to by all seven countries, Trump blew apart the veneer of cordiality that had prevailed throughout the two days of meetings in a resort town on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. “Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our US farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our US Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the US Market!” Trump wrote. A few hours earlier, Trudeau said the seven nations had reached broad agreements on a range of economic and foreign policy goals. But he acknowledged that deep disagreements remained between Trump and the leaders of the other nations, especially on trade.

Now, PM Mahathir Mohamad plans to give Malaysia a new 'national car'

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is reviving his dream of a new national car after the automaker he started in the 1980s was privatized and a stake was later sold to a Chinese company. “Our ambition is to start another national car, perhaps with some help from Southeast Asia,” he said at a Nikkei conference in Tokyo, his first official overseas trip since being reinstalled as premier last month. “Malaysia has the capacity to do almost 100 percent of the development of a new automobile. 

This can be obtained by having foreign partners.” Proton Holdings Bhd., the carmaker Mahathir started in 1983 during his first stint as premier, faltered over the years even with billions of dollars in grants and subsidies. It was taken private in 2012 by DRB-Hicom Bhd., a conglomerate controlled by Malaysian billionaire Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary. Last year, China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. bought a 49.9 percent stake in Proton. Mahathir saw it as an insult to national pride, and viewed the carmaker as collateral damage from his ongoing feud with then-premier Najib Razak. He criticized the government for the sale, saying that the administration “seems to be set on bankrupting Proton and selling it off, because I think it is regarded as my baby.”

G7 leaders divided on trade; Trump attacks EU, Canada amid backlash

Leaders of the Group of Seven rich nations headed for a summit in Canada on Thursday more divided than at any time in the group's 42-year history, as U.S. President Donald Trump's "America First" policies risk causing a global trade war and deep diplomatic schisms. In a bid to rebuild America's industry, Trump has imposed hefty tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, including those from key G7 allies like Canada, Japan and the European Union. 

Trump has threatened to use national security laws to do the same for car imports and has walked back on environmental agreements and an international deal to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb. French President Emmanuel Macron, who has invested in a warm personal relationship with Trump, said the other G7 nations - Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan, as well as France - should remain "polite" and productive but warned that "no leader is forever," a sign that Europe would not surrender meekly to the U.S. president.

Ex-SoftBank COO Nikesh Arora awarded $128 mn to lead Palo Alto networks

Nikesh Arora could become one of the highest-paid U.S. executives after being named to lead Palo Alto Networks Inc., which granted him a pay package worth about $128 million. Arora, 50, is entitled to equity awards worth as much as $126 million when he takes over as chief executive officer on June 6, the Santa Clara, California-based company said Monday in a regulatory filing. 

About half of it will vest only if the firm’s shares more than double, while the rest is tied to his remaining on the job. Arora, who spent two years at SoftBank Group Corp. as founder Masayoshi Son’s No. 2, became Japan’s best-compensated public company executive in 2015. Regulatory filings show that the tech giant dished out 31.5 billion yen ($290 million) in compensation and related expenses during his tenure, a sum that rivals Silicon Valley’s richest pay packages.

Omotenashi: The Japanese secret that's lost in translation all too often

Like “gemutlich” (a German adjective describing fireside coziness), the Japanese word “omotenashi” is hard to define but easy to picture. It’s a cashier greeting you nicely rather than chatting with colleagues and tossing your purchase across the counter -- an all-encompassing focus on service and caring professionalism. Long hailed as the epitome of Japanese quality, the concept is for the first time coming in for a beating. More and more Japanese are wondering whether human-scale omotenashi makes sense in an age when Alexa, Siri and Japan’s own robotics are seeking to provide a frictionless experience through technology. I’d argue that the term belongs in our vocabulary and, in fact, offers a key to growth and prosperity. Skeptics make a persuasive case. While the spirit of omotenashi contributes to high service quality, it requires higher labor intensity per output, fueling low productivity both in the service sector and in white-collar work overall. According to the Japan Productivity Center, the per-hour productivity of Japanese workers is only about two-thirds that of their American counterparts. Japan ranked 20th of 35 OECD countries in 2017 and has been stuck at the lowest level in the G-7 ever since the statistics became available in 1970.

It took 8 yrs, Trump's tariff war for China, Japan to hold economic summit

China and Japan have resumed high-level economic talks after a hiatus of nearly eight years in a sign of improving ties in their often-frosty relationship.

The Japan-China High-Level Economic Dialogue was being held Monday in Tokyo for the first time since August 2010.

The Chinese side was led by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the first visit by a Chinese foreign minister for bilateral talks since 2009.

Asia's two largest economies have reason to cooperate in the face of President Donald Trump's moves to impose tariffs on imports from their countries and his demands that they open their markets more to American exports.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is headed to the United States this week to meet Trump.

Japan approves $926 billion budget: Can Shinzo Abe push fiscal reform?

Japan's parliament approved a record $926 billion state budget on Wednesday for the next fiscal year, starting on April 1, with analysts wary about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ability to push fiscal reform as he faces a crisis over suspected cronyism.

With the passage of the budget bills, attention is shifting to debate on a mid-year fiscal reform plan to rein in what is already the heaviest public debt burden in the industrialised world.

Analysts doubt Abe would push painful reform, at a time when he faces his biggest political crisis since taking office in late 2012 as suspicions swirl about a sale of state-owned land at a huge discount to a nationalist school operator with ties to his wife.

The 97.7 trillion yen ($925.89 billion) spending plan - above 97.5 trillion yen initially planned for the current fiscal year - features a large welfare outlay to respond to a fast-ageing population and a record military outlay to cope with regional tension related to China and North Korea.

Sony to enter Japan's taxi-hailing biz to take on SoftBank, Toyota: Source

Sony Corp looks set to become the latest blue-chip firm to jockey for position in Japan's taxi and ride-hailing market, with plans for a joint venture to develop an artificial intelligence-based hailing system, the Nikkei newspaper reported.

Japan is seen as a potentially lucrative ride-hailing market, with regulators under pressure to ease stringent rules.

Currently, non-professional drivers are barred from offering taxi services on safety grounds, and ride-hailing companies are limited to services that "match" users to existing taxi fleets via mobile platforms.

Sony plans to build the AI-based hailing platform with Daiwa Motor Transportation and four other domestic taxi firms, the Nikkei said.

China is coercing neighbours to reorder Indo-Pacific region: Pentagon

China is coercing its neighbours to reorder the Indo-Pacific region, the Pentagon told Congress in its annual budget proposals for the fiscal 2019, beginning October 1 this year.
Trump administration on Monday released their proposal for the fiscal year 2019 budget.

Fiscal years are different from calendar years. The budgetary proposal covers October 1, 2018, through September 30, 2019.
"China is leveraging military modernisation, influence operations and predatory economics to coerce neighbouring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to their advantage," the Pentagon said in its annual defence budget for the fiscal 2019.

Hyundai Motor Company invests in Singapore's ride-hailing firm Grab

Hyundai Motor Co said on Thursday it had invested in Singapore-based ride-hailing firm Grab, in the South Korean automaker's first foray into the rapidly growing sector as it tries to diversify following a sales slump in China.

Grab has expanded to eight Southeast Asian countries and has said it is the biggest operator in the region's third-party taxi hailing and private-vehicle hailing sector.

The companies will jointly develop services in Southeast Asia, including one utilising Hyundai's eco-friendly models such as the IONIQ Electric, the two firms said in a statement.

They did not disclose the value of Hyundai's investment and a spokeswoman for the automaker declined to comment further.

Grab's latest fundraising round, which Hyundai has joined, already includes investors such as China's Didi Chuxing, Japan's SoftBank and Toyota Tsusho, the firms added.

Hyundai said on Wednesday it is considering building a car plant in Southeast Asia, possibly in Indonesia or Vietnam.

The company's interest in the region has grown since a diplomatic row between Beijing and Seoul last year hurt South Korean firms that are highly reliant on the Chinese market.

The automaker also announced for the first time a self-driving technology partnership with Silicon Valley start-up Aurora earlier this month, a shift from its usual preference for developing technology itself.
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North Korean ballistic missile lands in the Sea of Japan: US

North Korea has fired an intercontinental ballistic missile which flew about 1,000 km before splashing down in the Sea of Japan, the US said on Wednesday.

This is the first such launch in two months which comes just a week after the US slapped fresh sanctions on the reclusive nation and declared it a state sponsor of terrorism.

The US Department of Defence detected and tracked a North Korean missile launch today at about 1:17 pm EDT. Initial assessment indicates that this missile was an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), Pentagon Spokesman Col Rob Manning said in a statement.

"The missile was launched from Sain Ni, North Korea, and travelled about 1000 km before splashing down in the Sea of Japan, within Japan's Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ)," Manning said, adding that the Pentagon is working with its interagency partners on a more detailed assessment of the launch.

He, however, said that the missile launch did not pose any threat to the US or its allies.

"The North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) determined the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America, our territories or our allies," Manning said.
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In a show of power, Japan, US begin joint naval drills off Korean Peninsula

Japan and the US on Thursday began joint naval drills south of the Korean Peninsula in a show of power against North Korea.

The US sent its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, three destroyers and around 14,000 troops to participate in the drills that will be conducted until November 26 in waters near the Okinawa archipelago, the US Navy said in a statement cited by Efe news.

South Korea and the US on Sunday had launched other joint drills covering larger ground in the Sea of Japan (called East Sea in the two Koreas), also as "a show of might" to Pyongyang.

After a meeting with the Commander of the US Pacific Command Admiral Harry Harris on Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had stressed on the need to reinforce the capacity of deterrence and joint response by Tokyo and Washington owing to a worsening security situation in the region.

The meeting between Abe and Harris in Tokyo comes a week after the US President Donald Trump's visit to Japan, as part of his Asia tour, during which he had urged Abe to jointly apply maximum possible pressure on Pyongyang to force it to abandon its weapons programmes.

From Japan, Trump had travelled to Seoul, where he had harshly condemned the North Korean regime in a speech at the South Korean National Assembly and underlined the strategic positioning of military assets in the region.
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Fujifilm aims double-digit growth at Rs 1,100 cr in FY18, business picks up

Japanese photography and imaging major Fujifilm is aiming for double-digit topline growth at Rs 1,100 crore this financial year buoyed by opportunities in small towns as they come out of the crippling impact of the last year's note-ban.

In the past five years, the company claims to have achieved 9 per cent year-on-year growth that substantiates its target to achieve double-digit growth this year.

"We had Rs 1,000 crore revenue last year and are looking at 10 per cent growth or Rs 1,100 crore this fiscal year," Fujifilm India managing director Yasunobu Nishiyama told PTI here today.

Nishiyama said after a slump post-GST rollout, the business has now started picking up and is hopeful of a promising future.

"Our focus here is on developing strategic solutions in medical systems, photo imaging, imaging capturing and graphic arts divisions," he said.

Fujifilm Sericol India, a group company based in Pune is developing inks for wide format printers.

"We already have local partners and are exploring the possibility of developing more products in association with local collaborators, Nishiyama said.

Fujifilm has launched a new Uvistar Hybrid 320 at its demo centre for wide format inkjet printers recently.
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Harassment of women can't be tolerated, says Ivanka Trump in Japan

US President Donald Trump's daughter and senior advisor Ivanka Trump said here on Friday that sexual harassment of women should "never be tolerated".

Ivanka Trump's visit came just two days before the US President's scheduled arrival in Japan on the first stop of an Asia tour.

At a World Assembly for Women, she spoke about boosting equal participation in "traditionally male-dominated sectors of our economy" but there were many empty seats that officials blamed on tight security restrictions, the BBC reported.

Ivanka Trump's father had been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and assault, all of which his representatives denied.

Accusations of groping, forced kissing and walking unannounced into changing areas at beauty pageants were made against Trump when he was running for President.

Past weeks brought heightened focus on sexual harassment around the world, which was sparked by the accusations against Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, continued in the #metoo movement where victims shared stories online, and already claimed the job of a UK Cabinet Minister, Michael Fallon.

When asked last week about the claims against Trump, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said all the women who made the accusations were lying.

At the Tokyo conference, Ivanka Trump said: "All too often, our workplace culture fails to treat women with appropriate respect. This takes many forms, including harassment, which can never be tolerated."
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US bombers train over South Korea ahead of Donald Trump's visit

Two US strategic B-1B bombers conducted drills over South Korea on Thursday, the US Air Force said, days before President Donald Trump arrives in the country amid high tensions with North Korea over its nuclear weapon programme.

News of the drills was first reported by North Korean state news agency KCNA on Friday, which said the exercises involving South Korean and Japanese fighter jets were a “surprise nuclear strike drill”.

“The reality clearly shows that the gangster-like US imperialists are the very one who is aggravating the situation of the Korean peninsula and seeking to ignite a nuclear war,” KCNA said.

Trump arrives in Asia on Sunday, beginning his first trip to the region as president in Japan before heading to South Korea and China, then Vietnam and the Philippines.

A series of missile tests by North Korea and its sixth and largest nuclear test have fuelled the most critical international challenge of Trump’s presidency.

The goal of Trump’s visit will be to increase international support for efforts to deprive North Korea of resources as leverage to coerce it to give up nuclear weapons, US officials said.

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North Korea rouses neighbours to reconsider nuclear weapons

As North Korea races to build a weapon that for the first time could threaten American cities, its neighbours are debating whether they need their own nuclear arsenals.

The North’s rapidly advancing capabilities have scrambled military calculations across the region, and doubts are growing the United States will be able to keep the atomic genie in the bottle.

For the first time in recent memory, there is a daily argument raging in both South Korea and Japan — sometimes in public, more often in private — about the nuclear option, driven by worry that the United States might hesitate to defend the countries if doing so might provoke a missile launched from the North at Los Angeles or Washington.

In South Korea, polls show 60 per cent of the population favours building nuclear weapons. And nearly 70 per cent want the United States to reintroduce tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use. There is very little public support for nuclear arms in Japan, the only nation ever to suffer a nuclear attack, but many experts believe that could reverse quickly if North and South Korea both had arsenals.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has campaigned for a military build-up against the threat from the North, and Japan sits on a stockpile of nuclear material that could power an arsenal of 6,000 weapons.

This brutal calculus over how to respond to North Korea is taking place in a region where several nations have the material, the technology, the expertise and the money to produce nuclear weapons. Beyond South Korea and Japan, there is already talk in Australia, Myanmar, Taiwan and Vietnam about whether it makes sense to remain nuclear-free if others arm themselves — heightening fears that North Korea could set off a chain reaction in which one nation after another feels threatened and builds the bomb.
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North Korea nuke threat 'critical, imminent,' Japan warns US, South Korea

The threat from North Korea has grown to a “critical and imminent level” and the United States, Japan and South Korea must address the matter, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told his US and South Korean counterparts in talks on Monday.

Onodera’s remarks underscored the deep concern in Tokyo after North Korean weapons tests, including test firing missiles over Japan, as Pyongyang seeks to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States.

His comments broke from more measured language on Monday by US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-Moo, as the three men met on the sidelines of a gathering of Asian defense chiefs in the Philippines.

“(The) threat posed by North Korea has grown to the unprecedented, critical and imminent level. Therefore, we have to take calibrated and different responses to meet with that level of threat,” he said, speaking through a translator, at the start of talks in the Philippines.

South Korea’s Song also acknowledged that “North Korea’s provocative behaviour is becoming worse and worse,” in public remarks before reporters were escorted out of the meeting room.
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Kobe Steel faces investors' ire after data fabrication scandal surfaces

Investors looked set to bail out of Kobe Steel Ltd on Tuesday, after Japan's third-biggest steelmaker revealed it had fabricated data to show its products met customer specifications in the latest scandal to rock corporate Japan.

Kobe Steel said on Sunday that about 4 per cent of the aluminium and copper products that it shipped from September 2016 to August 2017 were falsely labelled as meeting the specifications requested by customers.

The misconduct involved dozens of staff and possibly stretched back 10 years, the company said.

The admission from the steel and aluminium maker follows similar scandals at Japanese companies including Nissan Motor, Mitsubishi Motors and Takata Corp. Toshiba Corp is still battling the fallout of a scandal involving reporting inflated profits.

"The impact on financials is unclear, but could be substantial depending on request(s) for replacement/recall," Jeffries analyst Thanh Ha Pham said in a note. "Handling the situation is key to avoid long-term reputation damage."
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Nobel literature winner Kazuo Ishiguro: An artist of the disconnected world

A living example that literary art has no national landscapes or limitations, Japanese-born British writer Kazuo Ishiguro, the 2017 Nobel Literature laureate, is possibly its first recipient whose range of evocative works is not in his mother tongue and deals with situations and settings from far beyond his old and new homelands and times.

Spanning reminiscences of high life in the turbulent 1930s through the eyes of an English country house butler in the acclaimed Booker-winning "The Remains of the Day" (1989), the question of personal guilt a painter-turned-propagandist confronts in post-war Japan in "Artist of the Floating World" (1986), or other works set in Europe, colonised China, Arthurian Britain or in a dystopian future, Ishiguro's small corpus is distinguished by its variety as well as some customary motifs and style.

The narration in all but one of his seven books is in first person, and the works usually deal with the past of the protagonists. As he noted in an interview, he was more "interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened".
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Toshiba to sell chip unit to Bain Capital for around $18 bn

Japan's Toshiba Corp said on Wednesday it has agreed to sell its prized semiconductor business to a group led by US private equity firm Bain Capital LP, a key step in keeping the struggling Japanese conglomerate listed on the Tokyo exchange.

Toshiba said in a nighttime announcement through the exchange it had signed a contract for the deal worth about 2 trillion yen ($18 billion), the latest and perhaps final twist in a deal that only hours earlier had seen the company leading toward an agreement with its US joint venture partner Western Digital Corp.

The decision to sell the world's No. 2 producer of NAND memory chips, first reported by Reuters on Wednesday, was made at a board meeting earlier in the day.

Toshiba said the agreement assumed the deal would weather legal challenges raised by Western Digital. A Western Digital spokeswoman said the company did not have an immediate comment.
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